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Media and Ethics

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ABC The Drum - Disasters and the media: a necessary voice. Updated Thu 24 Feb 2011, 4:41pm AEDT My esteemed colleague, Jonathan Green, wrote an article on this website critical of the role played by the media in disaster coverage, using as his case study the coverage of the earthquake in Christchurch; an event he notes is once removed from the Australian coverage he dissects and criticises.

ABC The Drum - Disasters and the media: a necessary voice

On some counts he has a point. Some coverage is very intrusive. Some may be exploitative. Sometimes journalists go too far. He raises legitimate questions to ask. But in writing his article, he damns the media as neither there to help nor in any way empathetic. And it would not be a stretch to read his article as a condemnation of the media's role in disasters in general, not just this one. Maybe he hasn't worked in a local radio or TV station during a local disaster. As evidences just this summer in regional Queensland, in Brisbane, in regional Victoria and in Perth, local radio ABC and commercial stations alike, were a lifeline for the population.

The media takes no joy from tragedy. An old lady rang Tony Delroy’s late-night program on ABC Radio after midnight on Tuesday with a complaint. She was a contestant in his popular quiz, and before she tried to answer a general knowledge question, she chatted with Delroy about how fed up she was with the saturation coverage the Christchurch earthquake was receiving. There's a good reason so many are listening to Christchurch mayor Bob Parker. Pic: Getty Images.

She said she couldn’t believe that most of the free to air television stations had interrupted their regular programming to run continuous coverage of this event. She was upset that her usual soaps and game shows weren’t on. It struck me as a selfish and heartless complaint. Guest Post: The media and disasters – Pure Poison.

A guest post from Tammi Jonas takes a look at the performance of the media in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake: Coverage of the devastating earthquake in New Zealand this week compelled ABC The Drum’s Jonathan Green to write a post titled “The media is not there to help.

Guest Post: The media and disasters – Pure Poison

It does not feel your pain“. In it, he clearly outlines his horror at what this morning on Radio National he referred to as ‘institutionalised voyeurism’. Green’s key message is that: That's Entertainment? Sometimes, even in journalism, words are superfluous.

That's Entertainment?

Simple images and the unmediated experiences of those at the centre of newsworthy events are all that is required to communicate to viewers and readers the magnitude of those events. So why does Australian commercial television continue to ignore this principle? Instead of simply showing what has happened - in a flood, in a cyclone, in an earthquake - we are told what we can see for ourselves on screen. Even worse, the accompanying commentary in voiceover and pieces to camera consists of the most wretched, mindless cliché; a cut-and-paste no-brand and no-brain string of pat phrases that reveal nothing beyond the insensitivity and incompetence of the blow-dried “personalities” delivering them.

Victims, positioned as extras in a moveable backdrop for the flown-in presenters’ monstrous egos, are both insulted and patronised with vapid questions about how they are feeling. ABC The Drum - The media is not there to help. It does not feel your pain. Updated Wed 23 Feb 2011, 5:24pm AEDT The coverage, as they say, is ongoing. No one doubts for a moment that the Christchurch earthquake is a saddening, confronting thing, and that clearly it is a story that will occupy a lot of our attention. Story. I just said it, instinctively framing these events -- this rolling tragedy -- as a piece of journalistic raw material. Quite a story. The quake aftermath has been wall to wall on Australian TV for nigh on 24 hours now and looks like shouldering normal programming aside for a while yet.

Key network anchors and reporters were en route to New Zealand within hours ... papers and websites can't get enough of the words and pictures. Maybe that's a trifle harsh, but so much resource is thrown at something like the Christchurch quake, we are confronted by so much detail that the question demands asking. The media presents itself as being in some way empathetic. Surely anyone with a true need for information can access it through official channels? Stories. On the ABC Drum, editor Jonathan Green posted a marvelous piece about the media coverage of the Christchurch earthquake - "The media is not here to help.

Stories

It does not feel your pain" I posted a comment, which I am reposting here in an expanded form. Great piece, Jonathan. There is a curious thing happening here: in the interest of "human interest", the actual humanity of the subjects the media reports is stripped away. The human dignity and respect; the families and relationships; the complexities of why, and how, and what it means for individuals to be caught up in these terrible events - these things are jettisoned so the media can easily and quickly project an uncomplicated, powerful, but ultimately superficial image.

You pick yourself up on how the story becomes a "story" - going from a complex, human narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end, with characters and richness and depth, to a short, sharp, media moment. Few of them were in Egypt.